New York City has been for long in a deepening housing crisis marked by rising rents, shrinking affordability, and growing displacement. Decades of speculative development, state-backed gentrification, and the financialization of housing have reshaped neighborhoods, prioritizing profit over people.

Once working-class and immigrant communities are increasingly pushed out as luxury towers, re-zonings, and large-scale private investments transform the urban landscape. The crisis is not only about affordability, but also about justice—who gets to stay, who is excluded, and whose voices shape the future of the city.

Homelessness has reached record levels, public housing faces chronic underfunding, and so-called “affordable housing” programs often fail to meet the needs of low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. At the same time, grassroots movements and community coalitions are challenging these conditions, demanding housing as a human right and envisioning new models rooted in equity and care. 

The right to housing—in New York and globally—isn’t just a political, legal, and economic issue, but also an architectural one. What does the right to housing mean in practice? How can architects and other urban practitioners contribute? This event will bring together architects, planners, and housing justice advocates to explore how design and policy can confront the housing crisis and reimagine a more just, inclusive city. 
 
Guest Speakers:
Deborah Gans is Principal Architect of Gans / Co in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Her first projects include architecture, industrial design, and community’ based urban planning, where she frequently tackles extreme sites and programs. She has been involved in various community’ based projects that intersect landscape, ecology, and housing in New York and beyond.

Trust in Land: This lecture explores community land trusts as powerful tools for housing and land justice, drawing on examples from New York and London. Gan’s projects include large-scale water management and future housing in Sheepshead Bay and East New York, and a limited equity co-op and land trust in Kingston NY. She will also discuss other projects including London’s Church Grove, a community land trust developed by the Rural Urban Synthesis Society. Together, these cases highlight how land trusts can create new models of ownership, build equity, and foster more inclusive, resilient communities.

Samuel Stein is a geographer, urban planner, author and housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society of New York. His work focuses on the politics of urban planning, with an emphasis on housing real estate, labour, and gentrification in New York City. He is the author of Capital City: Gentrification and the Real Estate State (Verso, 2021).

Fight! Fight! Fight! Housing Is A Human Right?: This lecture explores critical questions around the idea of housing as a human right: What does it mean to call housing a right when tens of thousands of people are homeless? Is it a national or international right? And does a right exist if it cannot be acted upon? While raising important questions, the conversation emphasizes that housing is a human right and calls for greater collective control and universal housing guarantees. Focusing on social housing conversions and construction, it will trace their history in New York City, examine current movement demands, and reflect on how to act with purpose even when the vision for housing justice feels far from reach.

Panelists: 

Karen Kubey, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Toronto

Gabriela Rendón, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development at The New School

Miguel Robles-Durán, Associate Professor of Urbanism at The New School

Architecture and the Right to Housing in New York is convened by the Parsons Housing Justice Lab, in collaboration with Karen Kubey of the University of Toronto John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and the Architecture and Housing Justice Lab.

This program is part of a Pan-American series funded by the Canada Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council with additional programs in Mexico City, Toronto, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and São Paulo.

Generous support also comes from the Irving Grossman Fund in Affordable Housing, The Housing Justice Lab, Parsons, and Untapped.